Ultrasonic thickness evaluation of seminiferous tubule by fuzzy inference

Abstract

Abstract-This paper describes a seminiferous tubules evaluation using an ultrasonic probe. In this system, we evaluate a diameter of seminiferous tubules for azoospermia patients. We employ a 5.0MHz ultrasonic single probe. In the experiment, we employ large and small nylon lines as the healthy and unhealthy seminiferous tubules. We made ball shape phantom from small and large lines in total 24. We acquire the waveforms by the ultrasonic probe and calculate amplitude values from the data that band pass filters applied. We then calculate cumulative relative frequency of amplitude values. Fuzzy if-then rules are made for the cumulative relative frequency of large and small lines. We evaluate a rate of large lines among all lines by using the fuzzy MIN-MAX center-of-gravity method. In the result, the mean absolute error was 5.98 %. The correlation coefficient was 0.98. The proposed method thus successfully evaluated the rate of the large lines.

Ultrasonic Evaluation of Seminiferous Tubules by Frequency Map

“…[8], [12], from relation of diameter and frequency, we evaluate only rate of large line by amplitude value which applied band pass filters as an evaluate system before surgery. In this study, from same relation, we evaluate existing and distance of large line as a surgery support system.…”

“…In our previous study [8], we have proposed a method to evaluate a rate of large line of a phantom by a 5.0MHz ultrasonic single probe. The phantom consists of large and small lines in total 24 in rubber tube.…”